Monthly Archives: June 2011

Name My Quilt: Rashida Coleman-Hale’s Triangle Quilt

Finished Projects
Last weekend I took a class with Rashida Coleman-Hale of I Heart Linen.  This pattern is a quilt she designed and made in a week for Spring Market, and the pattern isn’t for sale yet, so I think I’m the second-ever person to make one!  Since triangles are not in my wheelhouse per se, I stepped outside my normal color palette, too. After I made it, I realized I apparently really like the Miami Dolphins.

Here’s a close-up of the feature fabrics. I picked up a FQ of Rashida’s robot print in linen and of Heather Ross’ Mendocino octopii at Intown Quilters where the class was held. My original inspiration for the color choice was the blue background with the orange marbles on the ropes (below the octopii).

This little octopus was serendipitous as I wasn’t fussy cutting the smaller triangles and this guy just popped up. With his tiny green robot friend.

And here is the back. I mostly wanted to use most of the fabric leftover from the front (hence the 60 degree angles in the big pieces), so I pieced three different long rows and joined them with some more of the Kona Snow which I used on the front.

So, now that I’ve given an overview of the quilt, you can help me name it! Here are the ones I’ve come up with:

  • Serendipitous Octopus
  • Miami Steampunk (because of the Miami Dolphins colors, and that the robots and octopii are references from one of my favorite book series, The Parasol Protectorate, started by Soulless by Gail Carriger. The fourth one, Heartless, just came out!)
  • Steve. Because, really, I might just start giving ALL my quilts random proper names.

If you have another suggestion, leave it in the comments!  Otherwise, go vote in the sidebar.

I’ll talk about the process of sewing with equilateral triangles in the podcast tomorrow.

Saturday Sampler Blocks

General Quilting
My schedule got thrown off a bit for the block pick-up because of our beach vacation, but I’m caught up and have to go this Saturday to pick up the next set!  Here’s May’s blocks.For the houses sampler, this month was a log cabin.  The original block design (which you can see here) called for a Sawtooth Star sun over the pine tree and no black strip at the bottom.  The shop owner let slip that another block would also have a sun, and rather than place my village on a far-away planet with two suns, I omitted it.  I didn’t want to have to put space helmets on all my cats.

I need to get to work designing my Pub block for the alley cats to hang out at!

And since I’m at the shop listening to the lecture for the Houses pick-up, I went ahead and signed up for the floral sampler, too.  This crocus block is the first one for the floral sampler:

Yes, it’s old fashioned.  It’s 30’s feedsack reproduction fabrics (the Aunt Grace line), and it reminds me of my dad’s mother, Grandma P.  Not that she had a wonderful flower garden or anything, but because she and Grandpa lived on a farm and would have used feedsacks at one time. To my knowledge she didn’t sew other than re-attaching buttons, and never quilted.  I still want to work in some way to personalize these, maybe with embroidery or butterflies or bees or something.

HtbaS - Episode 35

I finished my quilt for the Project Modern Challenge 3: inspired by the word “organic”. Of course I nerd out about it and go down a twisty path of organic chemistry.

  • Thanks to my friend Andi for taking the pictures! Check out her business Making Modern Memories for supplies and custom quilting.
  • Here’s the image that inspired the molecular cellulose border on the quilt.
  • Here’s a little verbiage about the quilt:

When I hear the word “organic”, I think of my undergrad friends at Georgia Tech who majored in Organic Chemistry. I created this quilt as an ode to the chemistry of quilting. After doing research on the molecular and plant structure of cotton plants, I designed the quilt to mirror the basic three-walled plant structure. The outer wax layer, represented by the binding, protects the primary woody wall, represented by the brown outer border.  The most important element of the cotton plant is the secondary wall, which is primarily made up of cellulose. I created a series of pieced blocks to represent the molecular structure of cellulose, which is comprised of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen with reactive hydroxyl groups.  I assigned each of those elements a fabric to create the molecular pattern. The Perle cotton quilting in this area emphasizes the molecular bonds which bind together the cellulose and lesser components such as ash, sugar, and organic acids. Finally, the tertiary wall, represented by the narrow beige inner border, protects the center or lumen, which is primarily filled with air in the cotton plant. In my quilt, the lumen is filled with the cotton plant itself, in applique in multiple stages of maturity from initial flower to full boll. The pebbled quilting motif represents the pockets of air within the plant structure.

The center applique was done by hand.  Piecing was done by machine. With the exception of the Perle cotton running stitch, all other quilting was done on a domestic sewing machine.  The finished quilt measures 49″x49″.

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Farmer’s Wife Quilt Along - More Blocks

Uncategorized

This brings me up to 9 completed blocks out of 50. I love the Birds in the Air (the one on the bottom), but it’s a lot of small pieces. Glad I did paper piecing on that one!

Farmer’s Wife Quilt Along: Blocks 2-6ish

Uncategorized
So there’s this thing:

I’m opting to be more of a “Farmer’s Mistress” since I’m only going to do 50 of the 111 total blocks to make a lap sized wall-hanging appropriate quilt.  I’m also going to use the papering piecing resources available on the Yahoo! group for the Farmer’s Wife, since those templates really didn’t float my boat.

Here is the assortment of fabrics I’ll be using - mostly blues and whites with a smidge of greens thrown in.

And here are my first five blocks, completed last night:

I need to clean the blood off the basket handle, as I bled on it when I pricked my finger sewing it on. Yet another reason I’m not fond of basket blocks.

HtbaS - Episode 34

I talk about how I put together a queen sized quilt top in a week and some random quilting adventures in hand-piecing, FMQ, and Farmer’s Wives (and Mistresses).

  • If you can donate 6 1/2″ fabric squares to Nonnie’s efforts, look here for info.
  • I was on Emergency Pants! (hi Bridget and Shane!)
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Sister’s Star Quilt

Finished Projects
Remember that Mystery Star quilt I made and had my friend Chris at Cotton Pig LAQ for me?  I can show pictures of it now!

My sister turned a Very Significant Age in terms of numbers last Friday, so I thought I’d make her a quilt for her bed. It struck me that I’d made quilts for a pantload of other relatives (including her daughter), but had not made one for her. Since she does fancy nurse-type stuff on a schedule very different from mine (see also: GROSS BLOOD and OOZY things) (P.S. - be an organ donor!), we don’t often get a chance to connect and talk, so I decided to just pick a pattern and hope she likes it. (spoiler alert: she did!)

I ended up choosing the pattern “Blue Moon“, which comes out to a 92 x 92″ square quilt. Since I had my mom do some casual recon to confirm her bed size and bedroom color choices, I knew that Queen size was the way to go, and adjusted the color accordingly. I also added two 4” borders on two ends of the quilt to allow for a little extra length to cover the bed accordingly. Plus it let me add a smidge more green to the quilt.

More pictures are on my flickr stream.

I’ll talk more about the how I pieced this queen-sized top in one week (yes: you read that right. ONE WEEK. Insanity.) in the next podcast.

HtbaS - Episode 33

A return to quilty goodness! After tangents into cats and reading, though. ; Lots of hand piecing while was I on vacation.

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When Hexagons Attack

General Quilting,
I’ve been a bit slack in posting my piece of this mayhem, and you may already know some of the background. In case you don’t…

So let’s do this thing! Only, I can’t really yet. I just got my fabric, and am still waiting on my triangle ruler. But here’s my plan.

  • I plan on making a generous lap-sized quilt, about 55×65″ for the hexagon center. Right now I’m thinking I’ll be adding a 6″ border around the hexagon center, which would make it 67×77″ finished
  • I’ll be cutting my hexies to 6″, which means 5.5″ finished height. For the center size I’m looking at, that comes out to about 121 hexies, not counting any halves I’ll need to make a straight edge to attach the border to.
  • I will be using a FQ assortment as well some coordinating strips I’ll be pulling from my stash. I can get 6 hexies per FQ at the size I’m using.  The assortment (note: Jaye should not click that - it’ll freak her out) I’m using has 21 FQs in it, which comes out to 126 hexies. Since I want a little more variety I might not use all the FQ fabric. But then I’ll have creepy sock monkey fabric leftover and the monkeys might come to life and kill me in my sleep, so I’ll have to think of something to do with it. (Note: I wasn’t bothered by sock monkeys until Jaye mentioned it, and now I can’t unsee their evil eyes.  I have a tendency to pick up other people’s phobias. At least it’s not the cymbal crashing monkey, though. That thing is FREAKY).

My ruler’s ETA is next Monday or Tuesday, so I’ll be able to start cutting then, assuming I’ve got my Project Modern Quilt under control.  In the mean time, to get you started, here’s some basics of the techniques we’re using:

We’re structuring this as a “Loose Quilt-Along”, or perhaps a “Point and Laugh Along” for those that want to participate as a spectator. If you’d like a badge of honor, feel free to grab this one from my flickr stream (as posted in my sidebar over there).  My goal is to have my quilt done for a Christmas present.